DIY LED Using 10 Watt Arrays

[mike31154]

A few additional photos showing the 5050 SMD LED RGB strip lighting I recently added to the fixture. Since I don't have a controller running the 10 watt chips, I'm using the RGB strips selected to blue on a timer to provide a crude dawn/dusk effect. I suppose I could have simply purchased a straight blue strip instead of RGB, but the cost difference is minor & it's interesting to play with the different colour combos possible with the IR remote control pad & the RGB strip.

Close up of the strips mounted along the center rail of 10 watt emitters. I simply drilled/threaded the center rail alumiunum angle in 4 locations & used small stainless steel screws to attach the angle holding the LED strips.


This shows a bit more of the fixture with the blue LEDs shining.


Now for some shots over the tank with different colours. Blue, red, violet/purple and white (using all 3 colours). I've left out the green since it's not a colour one would normally use on it's own over a marine tank. Photos are all with respective LEDs at full power. They can be dimmed down to near zero with the 44 key remote control.








As you can see the 'white' shot lights up the tank fairly well with the 2 rows of 5050 SMD LEDs at full brightness. Each row sports 63 LEDs in segments of 3 for a total of 126 LEDs. I have 174 LEDs left on the spool to use on another project. Someone with a FOWLR could easily build a suitable fixture using additional rows of these. Could even work for a tank with softies & LPS. You'd have to mount them fairly low & pack a bunch of rows together, but the stips are available with various levels of water proofing, so that shouldn't be an issue. There are brighter 5630 SMD strips available, as well as less bright 3528 SMD strips. A fairly simple diy to either build a full fixture, supplement existing lights or dawn/dusk effect which is what I use them for.

[mseepman]

Just to comment, I brought in 4 x 50cm strips of the 5630 Samsung LEDS in cool white and they are very very bright. They came mounted on a thin aluminum strip with a surrounding aluminum mount and after running for 5 minutes you would be burned by the aluminum strip. The surrounding mount is still fairly cool. Mounted to a proper heat sink, these would shed a lot of light! Haven't seen them in any colours or RGB yet.

[Aughskel]

Originally Posted by mike31154

Decided to document what I'd like to do with respect to LED lighting for my 77 gal tank. I've been fence sitting for some time watching various builds etc & finally decided to do a bit more than experiment, although this is really still just that, an experiment. While I'd love to get my hands on something like an EcoTech Radion, they're just a bit too rich for my budget at the moment. I have some knowledge as far as electrical gear goes, so a DIY lighting fixture should not be a problem & save me a few $$ in the process.

I'm not a fan of builds with massive heatsinks and have been looking for a somewhat lighter & more elegant solution. Some of the more costly commercial fixtures like Radion, Orphek, Kessil have caught my fancy since they seem to be able to get the job done without a 50lb piece of aluminum to draw heat from their LEDs. A reasonably sized heatsink with a fan or two is more to my liking.

Inititally I'd been looking at an MR16 two pin bulb solution. They're designed to run off 12VDC, so with a 12 Volt power supply, some MR16 LEDs & sockets to plug them into, I figured that would be a good way to go. Have a few 4 watt (4 x 1 watt) MR16s in cool white as samples that I'm using above the kitchen sink as task lighting.


These are great little lamps with heatsink & current limiting circuitry incorporated, but they do seem to run a little hot after being on for a while, so not sure whether they'll last the advertised number of hours before giving up the ghost. So far so good, perhaps the heatsinks are doing their job & my fears are unfounded. There are few to no threads on anyone using these over their tank, FOWLR, softie, LPS or SPS. Nevertheless, I'll keep my options open, since once the sockets are wired up to a 12 VDC supply, they're plug & play, easily replaced. Worst case, I can even disassemble them & replace the individual LEDs.

Since I'm on a 12 VDC kick as far as power supplies go, I've decided to pursue the 10 watt LED array route. Several manufacturers are now using similar arrays as a LED option for aquariums. Arrays can be had that run at over 100 watts. They're now available in many different colours, including UV & combo colours on the same chip. The combo chips are an interesting development since they should minimize the disco ball effect reported from many builders using individual 3 watt LEDs of different colours. They all use between 9 & 12 VDC running at 900 to 1000 mA. So close to 10 watts each at the rated voltage. I already have 4 cool white (6,000 to 7,000K) versions of these. 10 Royal Blues came in the mail yesterday & ten 10,000K arrays are enroute. Should be plenty for my 77 including spares.



Now to the heatsink issue. I already have two small heatsinks with fans designed specifically for these arrays & 10 more on the way. What I'm thinking is to use two aluminum rails in parallel & screwing these heatsinks into them. The heatsinks will span the two rails & serve to hold them together. I'd like to tap the heatsinks & mount each array with two screws in addition to using heatsink compound. Even with the tiny fan, these are very light, so the fixture should be light & open for air circulation as well.



Last but not least, there are optics available to fit over these. I'm thinking of trying without to start & go from there. Here's a pic with all the goods(except the power supply).



Stay tuned.

Do you design custom led headlights. I need them and ready to spend good money on them

[Aughskel]

Originally Posted by Aughskel

Do you design custom led lighting headlights. I need them and ready to spend good money on them

Still waiting for your reply

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by Aughskel

Still waiting for your reply

Sorry no, I don't custom design LED headlights & am not in the LED light manufacturing business. If I was, I think I'd be breaking forum rules here & jeopardizing my membership. This is a DIY project for myself only & information to benefit others that may wish to embark on their own project.

I've actually been looking for LED car headlights myself & haven't found too much. Not sure they are even legal if retrofitted in certain jurisdictions. Most car/truck headlight retrofits seem to be HID & Xenon, not LED.

[byee]

Mike,

Thanks for sharing you LED build.

I'm also in the process of designing me LED setup on paper. I will also be using the 10W LED's.......prob looking at 24 LED's for my 120 gallon reef tank. I will be using the Mean Well drivers instead of 12VDC 20A power supply with dimmers. I will also be just about finished building my programmable 4 channel light controller based on the Arduino PLC. The controller can be programmed to dim the lights throughout the day via PWM. The Mean Well drivers can be dimmed via PWM.

Did you design you setup with a 12VDC for simplicity? Dimming the lights is done manually using the dimmers?

Once again, thanks for sharing!

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by byee

Mike,

Thanks for sharing you LED build.

I'm also in the process of designing me LED setup on paper. I will also be using the 10W LED's.......prob looking at 24 LED's for my 120 gallon reef tank. I will be using the Mean Well drivers instead of 12VDC 20A power supply with dimmers. I will also be just about finished building my programmable 4 channel light controller based on the Arduino PLC. The controller can be programmed to dim the lights throughout the day via PWM. The Mean Well drivers can be dimmed via PWM.

Did you design you setup with a 12VDC for simplicity? Dimming the lights is done manually using the dimmers?

Once again, thanks for sharing!

Your plans sound interesting & it should be a great set up with the controller etc. A build thread to show your progress would be great. Not sure what your plans are with respect to livestock, but you might want to add a few more LED arrays for a 120. As you can see, my 77 uses 27 LEDs plus two strips of SMD5050 LEDs.

As far as my decision to go with constant voltage 12 VDC power supply, simplicity comes into play a bit, but cost was another consideration. One of the things I'd like to do in the future is put up a solar panel array for my home & this could potentially provide most if not all the power for my LEDs. Most photovoltaic systems are designed to produce 12 or 24 volts DC to charge batteries, so I could potentially run my LEDs off the solar array or battery bank. Need to keep in mind that the charging voltage will be higher than 12 volts to charge the batteries, so resistors in series with the LEDs would be needed. This is one of the reasons I chose 10 watt LEDs as opposed to the larger chips. Most 10 watters have a Vf of between 9 to 12 volts, so that keeps things really simple & cuts down on the amount of voltage conversion (drivers & other hardware) to run the LEDs. I see now there are a few 20 watt multi chips LEDs that have a Vf in that range. For now I like the idea of only having 2 power supplies. The number of electrical outlets I have available for my current set up would mean I'd need a few more power bars to run multiple Meanwell or other constant current drivers. I already have enough of a wiring rat's nest around my tank & more power bars to run multiple drivers are just not an option at the moment.

With respect to dimming, I like it simple there for sure. My dimmers are manual and I haven't touched them since setting the Vf at 8.5 volts for all the LEDs. I use digital timer power bars to bring the lights on line in a staggered cycle to provide a crude dawn/dusk effect. The RGB SMD5050 LEDs help in that regard as well. Less to go wrong, no programming or controller required and for my livestock, not much of a change from the blast of light they used to get from my old MH/T5HO rig.

For a larger future build, I might go a bit more sophisticated with the dimming, maybe. I'll certainly consider using larger, fewer multichips mounted higher up with optics. This would also cut down on the number of drivers, fans, wiring, etc required. By the time I get around to that build, I'm sure the price will have dropped even more on those, better spectrum & other innovations will be available. If I were to rebuild using the 10 watt chips, I might arrange them a tad closer together, like 4 inches on center rather than 4 & 1/2. Maybe even 3 inches. That would allow more LEDs & additional colours to be packed into the same area. I see there are now 10 watt chips available with blue & white on the same chip. Might also consider getting the larger heatsinks for them that don't require a fan. This seems to be the weak link with my build at the moment. I've replaced 3 of the fans to date & a few more are showing signs of weakness. A positive side to this issue is that none of the LEDs have burned out despite some of them running for hours with a stalled fan with no apparent ill effects. It may well be that even these heatsinks don't really need the fan to sufficiently cool a 10 watt LED. The open design with aluminum rails may have something to do with that.

Best of luck with your project, hoping to see how that goes.

[mike31154]

Tomorrow will be the 1 year mark running this DIY 10 watt multi-chip fixture. It's been working great, no LED burnouts despite the fact that a few of the fans failed and the LEDs are basically no name cheapies. I have replacement fans so not a problem there, but I would probably build it a little differently next time around. There are now slightly larger heatsinks available for 10 watt multi chips that supposedly cool sufficiently without a fan directly attached. I'll probably order a few of them to check it out. I think if I built a top on the fixture and added a couple of larger fans to move air through that, it may work without all the individual mini fans. I have something in mind along the lines of a semicircular piece of wood at each end, then adding thin slats across the top with a slight space between each. This will cover the top nicely while allowing air circulation similar to the open top configuration at present.

Livestock is happy, coral growing & my BTAs have never looked better. In fact they are taking over the tank. I'm still slightly underdriving most of the LEDs, so they should continue to plug away for another year or two no problem. The fixture is likely nearing the point where it will have paid for itself in power savings & not having to buy replacement halides and T5HO lamps. Starting to get the itch for another build though, this time with larger, fewer multi chips. Anyone contemplating a DIY LED fixture should at least consider these multi chips rather than the more common builds using 3 watt Crees etc. They may not be quite as efficient as the Crees or other big name brands, but the price is right & they work fine. They also now come in multi colour arrays on the same chip. Fewer LEDs can be used meaning less wiring & soldering.

[daplatapus]

Hey Mike. I'm still wondering if I shouldn't have gone this way too. I chickened out and went with what I kinda knew already. I think if I get a frag tank running in my basement I might try and go this route and pick your brain again. If you get to making another, definitely log your progress, I'd love watch it get built.

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

Hey Mike. I'm still wondering if I shouldn't have gone this way too. I chickened out and went with what I kinda knew already. I think if I get a frag tank running in my basement I might try and go this route and pick your brain again. If you get to making another, definitely log your progress, I'd love watch it get built.

I would hardly call what you're doing with the 'Jarduino' build chickening out. More like going all out with controller, programming etc. I've come to appreciate the simpler things these days, without so much computing. It's great to have the many features a controller or controlled LED fixture provides, but the results I'm having with a a few timers running the lights is working for me at the moment.

I continue to watch builds like yours with interest & may embark on something similar down the road, with programmable features. Folks like you are paving the way!